International Journal of Education & the Arts

This paper takes the position that drama education falls within the field of aesthetic education, and involves learners in both creating and responding to the art of drama through a blending of thoughts, senses and emotions. The paper looks at aspects key to the experience of teaching and learning in drama within the aesthetic framework, and argues from a teacher educator stance that if prospective teachers develop an awareness of their own responses to experiences in the arts, they can be better prepared for noticing and crafting their own aesthetic teaching practice. It documents the author’s own recalled aesthetic experience captured in poetic form, describes a later teaching episode which exhibits aesthetic and engaged features from a pre- service teacher education setting, and discusses the potential for learning from the transformation of aesthetic experiences.

Teachers in many countries live the language of standards although it is confined to uniformity and standardization. In the United States, for example, teachers teach to what is now called the Common Core State Standards that focus on students’ college and career readiness while falling short of developing good judgment and wisdom. In this article, drawing upon Nussbaum’s notion of narrative imagination, we address the following research question: How do we foster narrative imagination in elementary students in the midst of the external demands to meet standards? This research is conducted as “grounded practice” between a teacher educator and an elementary art teacher, who collaboratively created an integrated art curriculum unit, called Storytelling/Mural Painting Project, involving 68 fifth grade students, three storytellers from the local community, and three classroom teachers. Based on our findings, we suggest a model for rethinking education in the age of standards.

Intergenerational programs often reduce ageism and stereotypical thinking. This author uses a mixed methods case study to investigate how attitudes may change when older adults and children participate in an intergenerational art project. The research question, “Is there a positive correlation in children’s attitudes toward older adults and aging after interacting together in an engaging intergenerational art activity” is explored. Context for the study is in an elementary classroom. Gifted and talented students partner with volunteering older adults from the community to create hand puppets, write scripts and dramatize personal stories dealing with the big idea of communication. Statistical analysis using t-tests did not show significant change in students’ attitudes, yet there was evidence that students constructed new meaning toward their understanding of aging and older adults.

While literature on multicultural education indicates that Human Relations approaches to multicultural education are the most commonly practiced, such approaches also tend to be the most heavily critiqued by theorists. Scholars often offer speculative theoretical suggestions on how to improve upon Human Relations approaches. However, ethnographic case studies showing how such suggestions are carried out in the artroom at the elementary level are virtually non-existent in the literature. This article aims to provide readers with an illustrative case of how, in practice, an elementary art teacher is moving beyond the most heavily critiqued characteristics of Human Relations approaches. Descriptive detail is provided to paint a vivid picture of how she implements her curriculum, so that other art educators might draw from her practices and apply similar strategies within their own artrooms, as they see fit.

Situated at the intersection of research on Holocaust education and embodied literacies this study examines how an arts-based instructional approach engaged middle school learners in developing empathetic perspectives on the Anne Frank narrative. We addressed the research question: What can adolescents who are using their bodies to gain empathy with Anne Frank teach us about embodied literacies? Digital images and video were used to generate a multimodal analytic method that combined focus group interviewing with the Semiotic Photo Response Protocol and Visual Discourse Analysis. Analyses of performance and visual arts texts illustrated how students layered their understandings as they recast meanings across sign systems. As students engaged their bodies in space, in motion, and in character, they learned about the socio-historical and emotional contexts in which Anne lived. These findings suggest that arts-integrated and embodied learning opportunities may support students’ sensemaking about complex narratives.

This qualitative study presents an analysis of how guided visits to an art museum can provide leadership lessons for developing school leaders. The principal interns participated in teaching artists-facilitated guided arts engagement sessions at a large metropolitan museum. The sessions included art-making, observations of portraiture in the visual arts, discussions around their reactions to the art, and information on the artists’ choices, processes, and techniques. Data sources included observations of the sessions and interviews with participants; these were analyzed using thematic analysis methods. Findings indicated that guided engagement with the visual arts provided insights to participants about self (intrapersonal learning), understanding about how others learn (interpersonal learning), and development of a sense of agency through creative self-expression and changes in practice. The art-making and related narratives participants generated served as analogical bridges transferring learning from the arts experience to their leadership practice. Some participants also provided feedback on how they took this learning and translated it into action in their schools.

This article fills in the knowledge gap in the student-centered practices of generalist music and art teachers to prepare 21st century learners. The study shows that generalists, after completing a specialist professional development program, struggle the most in connecting subject matter knowledge to pedagogical knowledge, specifically student-centered classroom pedagogy. The study confirms previous literature on the shortfall of professional development training in adequately preparing generalists in the arts and supports the recommendations that advisory teachers and continuous professional development support are needed to increase the self-efficacy of generalists.

In this paper, I discuss my engagement with a visual journal as a companion to creative research practice during my dissertation research. Grounded in arts based research methodologies; I explore visual journals in relationship to research, reflection and analytic processes. I begin with a discussion of the visual journal as an artifact of qualitative thought, including its epistemological, theoretical, and methodological undercurrents. Next, through a series of visual journal examples, I discuss how this methodological engagement influenced my research trajectory. I close the paper with a discussion of the implications for using a visual journal in research and offer suggestions for how to start your own creative research endeavors.

The research presented in this paper draws on a study in the Kgalagari region of Botswana where participant observation workshops were conducted to illustrate the impact of using the Arts in Education approach (AiE). This approach was used through traditional storytelling in lessons on environmental issues in a rural primary school in the Kgalahari region of Botswana. The BaKgalagari Standard 4 children participated in lessons in which community elders were invited to tell them stories. The lessons conducted offered the participants exemplary activities in conducting a teaching unit incorporating story-telling, dramatizing and visual art, whereby the story was embedded within the learners’ contexts and in the idea of environmental appreciation. The outcome of the study demonstrated that this approach can enhance learning by yielding a more egalitarian and communicative environment, which takes into account the voices of previously socially excluded learners, into the teaching and learning process.

Youth arts and humanities programs are providing invaluable learning opportunities for youth participants to become what we term “homegrown teaching artists.” After several years of artistic and pedagogic development, these alumni teach youth in the same programs where they were once participants. This phenomenon has emerged at the same time that the teaching artist field has become professionalized with new credentialed pathways through higher education. This simultaneity presents a paradox. Professionalization introduces formal standards and barriers to entry into the teaching artist field at the same time that teaching artists train youth who are racialized and low-income to become teaching artists through informal pathways in youth arts and humanities programs. In other words, the professionalization of the field is at odds with its aspiration to expand and sustain youth’s right to cultural self-determination. We address this contradiction by investigating the pathways and practices of three homegrown teaching artists before turning to implications for policy and practice.

Dynamic learning environments in the arts that nurture all students’ capacities for deep meaning, synthesis and connection-making have the best chance of standing in the gap toward educational justice. New paradigms for teaching and learning are needed that elevate all students’ capacities—not just the select few who excel in narrow subsets of intelligence. This article argues for a more socially just and equitable education that can be realized through and within cultures of thinking that develop students’ balanced intelligence.

A mixed model, research study conducted in visual art classrooms is highlighted, reporting the positive effect of balanced, learner-centered pedagogy and environments on the development of students’ quality thinking and dispositions. More learner-centered classrooms also positively affected students’ self-beliefs. This study resulted in new assessments for measuring students’ balanced thinking skills and dispositions, as well as an emerging theory of “Quality Thinking Systems” (Ingalls Vanada, 2011).

This paper identifies a range of positions and perspectives that impacted on New Zealand beginning primary (elementary) generalist teacher’s preparedness to teach music in relation to: government policy, curriculum and Graduating Teacher Standards requirements; and teacher educators’ and school principals’ expectations of them. The complex web of interdependency and tension that existed between the research participants highlighted a mismatch between policy, philosophy and practice. Preparedness to teach music was significantly influenced by teachers’ previous musical experiences; access to pedagogical knowledge and skill advancement during their training; guidance and modelling in schools. Notionally, access to music education for every child was valued, but this was often marginalised by government priorities around National Standards reporting in literacy and numeracy. Findings have the potential to advocate for a realistic professional learning, development and resourcing framework that matches every child’s right in New Zealand, to music as part of a broad education.

The shift in teacher education from face-to-face delivery to Distance Education mode means that the current landscape for the preparation of specialist and generalist Arts teachers is both complex and challenging, particularly since there is almost no guiding literature in the field of teacher education that attends specifically to this curriculum area. This paper takes as its case, one regional Australian School of Education that has translated face-to-face delivery into distance education modes in both secondary and primary arts education, through a suite of interactive programs and pedagogical engagements. Some of the approaches include re-designing curriculum, the provision of rich resources and relevant formative assessment, and perhaps most importantly, the establishment of caring, attentive relationships. The construction of communities of inquiry and in the case of the Arts, a community of practice, is essential to the success of these approaches.

In this paper we present findings of a study on the implementation of a multimodal teacher narrative inquiry component, theoretically grounded by Rosenblatt’s theory of transaction analysis, methodologically supported by action research and practically enacted by narrative inquiry and multimodal learning. In particular, the component offered teacher candidates a variety of multimodal activities, such as teacher body biographies, teaching museum and metaphor medley, all of which encouraged them to inquire into their teacher narratives both aesthetically and efferently. Portfolios consisting of resolution scrapbooks and reflective journals offered places to archive working material emanating from the teacher candidates’ responses to the activities. A close reading of journal entries, the resolution scrapbooks, and the written transcripts of a focus group indicated that the teachers not only gained insight into their own narratives, but they also added to their repertoires of teaching. At the same time, we acquired valuable information on future implementations.

Enacting heuristic phenomenological inquiry, this article explores the experience of watching a video of a live show of what was personally meaningful music for the researcher. In this study, personally meaningful music, defined as music integral to adolescent identity construction, was sung by and conveyed through the online discoursal self (Ivanič, 1998), or performed stage persona, of Mina Caputo, a transgender woman in the alternative-metal band Life of Agony. Data included a one-hour video of a live show and online comments. Data analysis involved heuristic and arts-based elements, involving explication of qualities of Mina Caputo’s discoursal self, explication of themes in online comments, and creative syntheses of data into found poetry and flash fiction. General results include the majority of comments posted online representing identity performances that challenged dominant practices and discourses regarding transgender possibilities for selfhood. Results also describe how the experience of heuristic inquiry itself represented a process toward internal growth for the researcher. This paper presents a methodology useful for self-discovery related to the central phenomenon, provides empirical data of online transgender performance, and explores video-sharing website writing as identity performance.

Contemplating one’s teaching has long been an essential part of teacher education. Accordingly, as an instructor of a literacy methods course with a tutoring component, I asked education majors in the class to send me weekly e-mail reflections about their teaching experiences. However, they had difficulty considering their lessons. I knew poetry stimulated introspections. Therefore, hoping to evoke the education majors’ reflexivity, I requested they create two poems (middle and end of the semester) that portrayed their perceptions and dilemmas related to their teaching practices and lessons. Using constant comparative analysis, I explored the education majors’ lyrical forms. Writing in a poetic voice prompted the education majors’ contemplations. However, rather than focusing on their lessons, their initial poems portrayed their anxieties about teaching while their end of semester poems centered on concern for children. Thus, as is typical in arts-based research, the study afforded generativity (puzzlements meriting additional investigation).

This article describes a study of art therapy and music education students at a Midwestern university in the United States, who participated in single-semester service-learning assignments prior to their clinical internship or student teaching experience. Undergraduate music teacher-candidates taught music to homeschool students; art therapy graduate students worked at community centers or other agencies. This paper describes research methods, depicts major findings, and features case examples. Analysis of embedded assignments, which included written reflections, visual artwork, case studies of homeschool students, and surveys suggests that service-learning facilitated growth in personal attitudes and professional skills considered important to student preparation for their culminating clinical experiences. A discussion of the benefits of service-learning as a pre-professional pedagogy and recommendations for teaching and further research are offered. Additional findings related to arts based service-learning may help inform the development, implementation, and outcomes of arts based service-learning pedagogy.

In this paper, the role of dramatic play was examined as a means of developing primary school pupils’ peer relationships. A research study was conducted in 120 public primary school classrooms in Greece. The research data came from 2428 children aged 8 through 11 years (1202 boys, 1226 girls) in an experimental process of pre-testing and post-testing, using Moreno’s sociometric test. Statistical analysis of research data revealed that dramatic play activities have positive effects in pupils’ peer relationships. Moreover, the positive effect that dramatic play has on pupils’ friendships is not related to the age of the children because the research expectations were confirmed in all experimental classrooms. Thus, more attention should be paid to a dramatic play-based curriculum in primary education if the development of pupils’ peer relationships is to be facilitated.

This paper reports the findings of a project that investigated uses of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in the creative and performing arts at four Australian universities and raises four significant areas for discussion: engaging technologies as an ongoing requirement of planning, delivery and evaluation of teaching and learning in higher education; ePortfolios and their implications for curriculum planning; the influence of ePortfolios on learning, self-awareness and reflection; and differences in ePortfolio expectations and uses between the varying specializations of music study in higher education. Identifying marked differences between the four higher education institutions in this project and their applications of ePortfolio work, our discussion supports the hypothesis that ePortfolios cannot be applied generically across the arts; rather the ePortfolio requires qualification in expectations, roles, applications and theorisations. The paper makes recommendations for higher arts educators and highlights some of the strategies that heighten the development of professional practice and related learning.

The Soundplay project ran in four early years settings in Sheffield, UK, in 2014-15, using a series of music workshops to attempt to increase the music and language attainment of children aged two to four years. The associated research investigated the impact of the programme, using a combination of observation, music and language tracker tools, and interviews and written reports from the early years practitioners, parents and workshop leaders. The research demonstrated higher than average development in language skills amongst children who had been identified as being at risk of developmental delay, and also highlighted ways in which music helped to build confidence, social interaction and enjoyment. The confidence and engagement of the practitioners was supported through professional development, and end of project surveys showed how the practitioners had understood the potential of music for their children and had identified some strategies for including it in their future teaching. The project is evaluated here as a model for collaborative and embedded research, which contributes to the growing body of evidence for the effectiveness of music in early years settings.

The basis for my article is how, and if, a collaborative land art project can provide opportunities for such co-creating as suggested in the national framework plan for preschools, which explicitly states the child as a co-creator of a shared expressive culture. I further wish to propose land art as a meaningful cultural practice, closely connected to children’s physical awareness and sense of place. In doing so, I use the concepts of sensation, making and knowledge, exploring them as mutually beneficial.

The way I worked to explore these matters, was to initiate and conduct a land art project in an open air preschool. I was with a group of children for several days. Adults and children worked together to make a shape, in a landscape well known to the children. While initiating, suggesting and participating, I experienced and observed the children’s interaction with the land, with forms of knowledge and with each other.

My experiences and observations, that constitute my data from this project, are composed into a story. The writing was a process of organizing and analyzing, as well as presenting, observations and experiences. This is consistent with narrative analysis as defined by Polkinghorne (1995).

I connect my narrative to selected references to the Western history of art. These refer to knowledge needed to understand the concepts of land art, environmental art and related art work. They are also sources of knowledge for the children to interact with, and are, as such, referred to also in the narrative part of the article.

I further include a short summary of theories and traditions in Norwegian arts education, as well as a brief insight in the traditions and plans of Norwegian kindergartens/preschools . This offers knowledge of the institutional frameworks for cultural upbringing and socialization, and is here seen as a background for considering children’s genuine participation in cultural practices.

This study examines how the Early Years Educators at Play (EYEPlay) professional development (PD) program transformed preschool teachers’ reconceptualization of children’s learning identities and abilities. The EYEPlay PD model was a yearlong program, which integrated drama strategies into literacy practices within classroom contexts. Cultural-historical activity theory and Holland’s (1998) identity theory were used to understand how EYEPlay PD practices mediated teachers’ conceptualization of children’s learning identities and abilities. Twelve semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with 19 preschool teachers. The data were analyzed via constant-comparative and interpretive methods. The study findings show that the EYEPlay PD activities mediated the teachers’ reconceptualization of the children’s learning identities and abilities in relation to developmental age and dis/ability status.

This article presents a study investigating musical learning among 9th grade adolescents in a Swedish lower secondary school. The adolescents collaboratively composed songs for a self-written musical, which they taught to their peers. The purpose of the study was to explore the ways in which adolescents acquire musical knowledge in this specific setting. A sociocultural perspective was employed, and the methods used were observations and interviews with the adolescents. The results demonstrated that the adolescents’ choice of tools when learning and teaching their peers were the same as those used by their teacher. The written score was distinct in all their musical learning, suggesting the dominance of the written paradigm. In conclusion, in order to support musical learning, music teachers need to know how to create opportunities for peer teaching and leaving the students to themselves, and when to interfere and guide the adolescents into their Zone of Proximal Development.

This paper outlines a journey of arts-based inquiry into teacher education and identity transformation in the transition to teaching, guided by Barone and Eisner’s Seven Features of Arts-Based Educational Inquiry. Employing a theatre-based research approach the researcher investigated teachers’ epiphanic or revelatory first moments of identity transformation, culminating in the creation of the play script and performance: The First Time. The article discusses what Barone and Eisner’s works offered this arts-based researcher on their journey. Outcomes of the research include the value of working backwards from this frame for further data elucidation and analysis and presenting research to relevant ‘expert’ audiences.

This paper examines Karagiozis – Greek shadow puppet theatre for children – as a way to explore how the Arts might support socially just education in the early years. As authors from diverse cultural backgrounds with different experiences of arriving and residing in Australia, we consider themes of social justice identified in a Karagiozis play and an interview with a Greek-Australian Karagiozis puppeteer, drawing on Nussbaum’s (2000) Capability Approach. Layered analysis of the data provides a basis for examining: (1) the potential of Karagiozis for exploring social justice themes with young children; and (2) intersections between social justice themes identified in Karagiozis and circumstances for multicultural groups in the Australian context. This paper builds awareness about the value of employing the Capability Approach as a framework for exploring matters of social justice and contributes to dialogue about the value of the Arts in opening possibilities for young children’s learning and meaning-making about social justice matters in local and global contexts.

Generalist teacher educators in Australia are struggling with an impossible expectation in the area of arts education. This is due to a cascading trio of systemic issues. Firstly generalist teachers are entering their teacher education courses with variable and often minimal personal arts training. Secondly they are ill supported to improve their arts discipline knowledge through a lack of time given to each arts discipline during their courses. Finally they are expected to deliver the arts curriculum, often without extensive professional support, to their classes at the same quality and level as a specialist arts educator. At present, the research has focused on individual arts disciplines, not the effect of these cascading systemic issues on the confidence and competency of pre-service teachers across multiple arts disciplines. This paper reports on the findings of a study that tracked the levels of self-efficacy across four arts disciplines and suggests new approaches to this impossible expectation.

Multi-age classrooms feature the intentional grouping of students from consecutive grade levels for the purpose of fostering a nurturing classroom atmosphere. While an abundance of research on multi-age education has been produced throughout the past 50 years, only recent efforts have seen researchers turn their attention to the experiences of art teachers working with mixed-age groups. The purpose of this article is to characterize the qualities of mixed-age instruction for an art teacher and a group of homeroom teachers through the collection of qualitative observations and interviews at a selected school site, with the intent of describing the congruities and incongruities in their instructional practices and organizational strategies. The results detail subtle organizational differences, yet congruent practices related to thematic instruction and cooperative learning, and emergent findings related to the importance of forming communities of multi-age practice and adopting an ethic of caring.

This qualitative case study of a southwest regional elementary school used interviews, focus groups, and document collection to better understand how this arts-integrated school is meeting the needs of English-language learner (ELL) students, discerning increased test performance on state standardized tests. Data were analyzed using open coding. Key findings indicated the culture of the school includes pervasive collaboration, integrity, and confidence, allowing for expedited academic-knowledge acquisition. Little research addresses arts-integration schools with emphasis on ELL-student performance. This article explores a bounded case study of an arts-integration elementary school in the southwest United States. Researchers aimed to determine how this newly reconceptualized school building had such a dramatic increase in student performance while maintaining a high number of ELL students. To better understand the potential influences of the school, a brief review of the literature revealed information about arts-integration schools, ELL learning, and leadership in schools.

As arts educators, we are concerned that the teaching and learning of the arts is remaining static within New Zealand primary school classrooms. Despite acceptance of research promoting the importance of arts education for students; a clear and valued arts curriculum in New Zealand since 2000; and, UNESCO policy strongly advocating for the role of arts education, there remains a relatively minimal implementation of arts education in New Zealand primary classrooms. Our research examines a proposition that in order to provide the benefits of an arts education to children in what is a crowded curriculum, generalist teachers may need to focus on teaching the arts across the curriculum. Informing this proposal is the ongoing government policy focus on literacy and numeracy. This article documents a research project that examined how the arts were and were not being taught across the curriculum by one teacher in one primary school in New Zealand.

As a hauntological artist, I deconstruct my silenced First Nation Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) ancestry and look towards the intergenerational narratives of my grandmother, mother, and I. Employing the methodology of a/r/tography, the intersection of autobiography and art-making, I utilize diverse art forms to find that g(hosts) reside amongst spaces of liminality. Supported by the methodology of a/r/tography and drawing upon works, which blur the boundary between past and present, self and other, I deconstruct the silencing of my First Nation lineage by creating three art(works). These art(works) are placed within an exhibition catalogue and inquire into 1) the specters that loom between the evocative objects of our narratives, 2) how script-writing and the script’s performance can reveal ghosts in spaces of liminality, and 3) how sculptures facilitate spectral movement. Each individual art(work) plays a role in breaking the silence. A(wake), specters arise.

This paper is based on a phenomenologically oriented exploratory case study. It focuses on Bea, one of the many fascinating individuals the author met at a unique educational site who had an invaluable impact not only on the refinement of the initial guiding question of inquiry, but also on the author as an educator and educational researcher. Through the notion of transitional space in particular, as well as the interpretation and analysis of Bea’s short film and the interview, the author invites the interested readers to contemplate on our own assumptions about youth as well as those we teach, what constitutes a ‘finished’ product, and what we consider to be the site and practices of education.

Music activities can have a positive impact on pupils' schooling. It is therefore interesting to obtain more knowledge about pupils’ perceptions of different kinds of music activities in school and how these activities affect their schooling. The study was conducted in Sweden at a municipal elementary school where pupils are offered choral lessons three times a week in addition to regular teaching. The aim of the study was to obtain knowledge about pupils' perceptions of attending these choral classes. The results show that the choral singing creates a sense of togetherness. Pupils' learning becomes situated in a practice where everyone is expected to do their best and to contribute to a joint process. These circumstances make the attending pupils to describe their schooling as fun, developing, and instructive.

Social phenomenological analysis is presented as a research method to study gallery talks or guided tours in art museums. The research method is based on the philosophical considerations of Edmund Husserl and sociological/social science concepts put forward by Max Weber and Alfred Schuetz. Its starting point is the everyday lifeworld; the researcher interprets the phenomena that can be observed there as an individual, intersubjectively accessible reflection of subjective meaning. This approach is suitable for research projects that seek correlations and structures of certain typical situations in domains that are theoretically few prestructured. The article explains the methodological principles, the use and the profit of this research method.

This article investigates the process of devising strategy in an intercultural Baltic-Nordic setting. Sixty teacher education participants collaborated on an interdisciplinary artistic production based on Norwegian folk beliefs and wights through an intensive, week-long program called Nordplus. Using this as a case study, we explored how the devised approach functioned within the given context and examined the dilemmas and challenges that the teachers faced. We chose a qualitative, ethnographic and descriptive approach, collecting data through observations, questionnaires and interviews. The analysis yielded a variety of insights into the process of devising strategy, specifically within the context of diverse tutorial practices and cultural backgrounds, and the teacher’s role in it.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it outlines an author-developed school orchestra model. Second, it describes students’ perceptions of their orchestra experiences after model implementation in terms of program satisfaction, personal and social experiences, and learning motivation. The orchestra program was implemented in 77 elementary schools over the course of a full school year. The model includes procedures for setting up and managing a school orchestra including teaching curriculum, learning repertoire, and networking the resources. For the students’ perceptions of the orchestra experiences, 593 elementary students from 15 schools were randomly selected from the orchestra model schools, and were asked to complete a survey at the end of the one-year implementation. Students reported satisfaction with the orchestra program, positive personal and social experiences, and learning motivation. The results indicate that school orchestra programs can provide meaningful opportunities for students to gain positive experiences in self-confidence, actualization, building relationships, listening skills, motivation for participation and academic achievement.

Powerful Learning Experiences (PLEs) of Suzuki music teachers were examined in this fifth study in a series. The definition of a PLE is: Experiences that stand out in memory because of their high quality, their impact on one’s thoughts and actions over time, and their transfer to a wide range of contexts and circumstances.

Ten participants were each interviewed twice. All were Suzuki music teachers who had PLEs through their exposure to Suzuki and his philosophy. The second interview was the first in the series of studies to focus on teaching. Though the contexts of the PLEs were more similar than in any previous study, there appeared to be a unique set of factors for each individual’s experience. PLEs appear to be co-created in a complex system and display what can be described as liminal thinking and attunement.

Project-based learning and artistic creation provide future secondary teachers with an opportunity to experience and to reflect on the importance of including a gender perspective in education. This article describes a case study where students of the Postgraduate course in Secondary Teacher Training explore the image of the female body in comics, publicity, beauty contests and the world of fashion with the aim of planning and designing a project that can be undertaken by school-age children and promoting the discussion of issues such as equity and equality of rights and opportunities for women and men in subjects they will later on have to teach in a secondary school classroom.